Two Missouri police officers were indicted separately this week and accused of similar crimes — pulling over women and searching their phones to find nude photos.
Never give cops your phone, yes. Also, don’t use biometrics to lock your phone. Police can legally force you to unlock with your thumb print, they legally (and like, physically) cannot force you to reveal a passcode stored only in your brain.
Just to be clear, they can’t legally search your phone at all without either consent or a warrant. There is absolutely no reason you need to hand your phone to a cop during a traffic stop, no matter how it is secured.
That dials 911 on Android. That was a fun feature to discover on my new phone. I’m sitting there, trying to turn up the volume for a podcast and it’s not working. Pull my phone out of my pocket and see that it’s on a countdown before it dials out! The count is down to 3! No, no, no, no, no, no, no! Cancel! Hang up! What the fuck!? Why is that a thing!?
A useful aspect of Lockdown mode (on top of it potentially being quick) is that you can still get into the camera without unlocking it (for me it’s a double tap on the power). When you’re locked down they can’t navigate to your photos, but you might want to be able to record things.
Patterns have less possible combinations than pins, and is easier to shoulder snoop than a pin. Edit: and also leaves more visible smudges from oils in your finger.
Also in older android versions (it might be changed by now) they used to store it in plain text.
Alpha-numeric passwords are the strongest, but is very inconveinient to most people so PIN is the second strongest and a good compromise between security and convienience.
Never give cops your phone, yes. Also, don’t use biometrics to lock your phone. Police can legally force you to unlock with your thumb print, they legally (and like, physically) cannot force you to reveal a passcode stored only in your brain.
Just to be clear, they can’t legally search your phone at all without either consent or a warrant. There is absolutely no reason you need to hand your phone to a cop during a traffic stop, no matter how it is secured.
Obligatory reminder that (for iPhone at least) hitting the right side button rapidly 5 times locks out biometrics and forces pin entry
That dials 911 on Android. That was a fun feature to discover on my new phone. I’m sitting there, trying to turn up the volume for a podcast and it’s not working. Pull my phone out of my pocket and see that it’s on a countdown before it dials out! The count is down to 3! No, no, no, no, no, no, no! Cancel! Hang up! What the fuck!? Why is that a thing!?
That shit got disabled real quick.
Ngl i got a voice telling me i should try it now
Edit: ok you weren’t joking 🤣
For Android, a reboot forces a pin code.
There’s also ‘lockdown mode’ which forces a pin and hides most info from the lockscreen.
Long-press power, then select ‘lockdown’. (you may have to enable this feature in settings)
A useful aspect of Lockdown mode (on top of it potentially being quick) is that you can still get into the camera without unlocking it (for me it’s a double tap on the power). When you’re locked down they can’t navigate to your photos, but you might want to be able to record things.
And to get the reboot option on Pixels, long press Power and Volume Up. Infinitely more annoying than just long pressing the power button.
What? Do you mean to get the pop up on screen? That’s still a simple long press on the power button. I just did it now on my Pixel.
Long power + Vol Up does a hard reboot directly without calling the power menu
Default after Pixel 5 is to bring up Google Assistant with a long press of the power button.
Then they must have changed their minds again, I haven’t changed this setting so it’s default has been long press for power button
But I did find the setting so you can change it and not worry about it anymore: Settings > System > Gestures > Press and Hold power button
Thank you! I looked it up before and the only thing I found was that the default setting had changed.
But it also takes like 10-15 seconds of holding it. Not something you can do when a cop holds out his hand for your phone.
For a hard reboot yea. It’s faster to do the onscreen menu which pops up in like a second
Or you can root and restore such powers to Tasker
This is the case on iOS as well but restarting takes longer and more explicit interactions than pressing a button five times
alternatively hold power and one of the volume buttons for a few seconds
Thats handy AF. Thanks.
Oh forcing physically works very well with a gun to your head, but yeah not legal ofc.
Also any phone that has been out of your vision in the hands of police, border agencies or TSA is electronic waste.
What about the pattern lock?
That’s just a passcode for practical purposes
Patterns have less possible combinations than pins, and is easier to shoulder snoop than a pin. Edit: and also leaves more visible smudges from oils in your finger.
Also in older android versions (it might be changed by now) they used to store it in plain text.
Alpha-numeric passwords are the strongest, but is very inconveinient to most people so PIN is the second strongest and a good compromise between security and convienience.